


Harlow

by ThePatriotAngel



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, May Get A Little Dark, PTSD, Sexual Slavery, Shiro has PTSD, Shiro's eyeliner, Slavery, Work In Progress, cyborg arm, prisoner
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-30 09:28:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11460750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePatriotAngel/pseuds/ThePatriotAngel
Summary: The Voltron team tries to figure out ways to defeat Zarkon when Shiro is sent on a mission to a strange planet from Coran. On his way back, his Lion picks up a signal. This signal leads him to a strange ship: a small pod barely large enough to contain a person. The technology is unlike anything Shiro's seen before.He brings it back to the castle where Coran and Pidge get it open and what's inside astonishes everyone: it's a human girl in cryo sleep!Who is this stranger, and how will her arrival affect the team? When Coran figures out how to wake her up, how will she react to being so far from Earth in the care or strangers? She doesn't speak, but when the team finds out that she has the power to share memories and images with anyone she touches to communicate, what will they find about her past that might ensure their future?In this war against Zarkon and the Galra Empire, the Paladins need any and all help they can get, even from a girl who's been through unimaginable abuse by people high in the Galra command, and even Zarkon himself.





	1. Chapter 1: Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for clicking on this story.

          **Chapter 1**

     Space was always silent.

     There was no one around to hear her low breathing, and all she could do was sleep. It might have been hours, days: but she would wake up remembering none of it.

     She laid still, immobile, as time passed until she could sleep no longer.

 

     ***

     The Imenium system was a strange one- it had no planets with life or water. Only small ones with still, barren dirt or harsh electric storms. Shiro looked down at a reddish planet covered in deep cracks that went down who knew how many miles and sighed. Gusts of wind blew against the sides of the Black Lion- his only companion on this trek- carrying reddish dirt with it. He piloted the Black Lion toward the surface with intent to enter a large, cavernous gap between two planetary plates. Waves of red dust fell off the top edge, just falling down into the infinite darkness where the wind could not reach.

     He kept a steady eye out for the glowing orange rocks Coran had shown him. It was just too dark to see anything when he felt a pull in his mind, and the pilot controls were taken from him. He let the Black Lion guide him deeper into the darkness and felt an eerie shiver pass through his body like electricity. The Lion’s bright yellow eyes shined over the cavern's wall and illuminated dull orange/red stones jutting out of cracks in the wall. Spiney shadows were thrown against the wall like rapid tiger stripes.

     "Good work, buddy." Shiro left his seat and went to the exit from the Lion’s mechanical mouth. He let the jets in the back of his suit lift him off his feet and through the air to the walls. The stones of the wall looked like soft limestone but were red and brittle like clay. It was no wonder that there were so many cracks in the planet- any small amount of seismic activity was sure to cause immense damage.

     Shiro took a pick hammer much like the ones from Earth and hit the hard orange stones, seeing how easy they would break. Nothing. Not even a scratch. "I'll have to break the ground around it to get it out," he said to his Lion. He found himself always talking to the silent machine when they were alone. It made him feel less lonely.

     Sometimes it would purr to him, but that's where the semi-complex communication ended.

     Shiro dug out the orange stone out in a few minutes. It had been much bigger than he had thought: the crystals went back deep into the stone but eventually came loose. He worked at it as red dust fell down through the air, coating his white Paladin suit in a light dusting of red. Somehow, it got inside, and he could soon smell it: like burnt wood and ash. He felt the dirt on his shoulders and neck especially and tried to ignore it while he did his task. It got in his mouth and he could taste it, feel it crunch when he closed his jaw.

     The rock was bigger in diameter than his torso and was a sea-urchin shape, pointy spines jutted out in all directions. He held the brunt of the weight with his metal arm, which wouldn't get injured by them. He got the stone into the lion's storage just before his jets overheated from the extra weight.

     This planet's gravity was more intense than he was used to. He piloted the Black Lion out of the trench into the harsh light of the day, trying to forget how much the planet reminded him of Mars, which he had spent a lot of time studying at home with his telescope as a kid. He went back into space, into the comfortable darkness it provided. Here, he felt at peace. In the quiet, he could sit back in his seat and silence his mind. The Black Lion started to purr in its chest. Shiro felt the vibration where his arms met the rests of his chair.

     His eyes closed and he basked in the Lion's gentle attention.

     All was quiet until a red blinking light shined through the cockpit accompanied by a beeping sound like a radar. "I'm picking up a signal. Some small vessel. It's not operational, but there's a low electrical current. Strange..." Shiro and the Black Lion flew closer through space until they were close enough for him to see the vessel through the Lion's viewport.

     It was really small, barely wide enough to fit a man and about thirteen feet long. Dark metal coated the outside. Shiro hailed the vessel cautiously and received no response.

     "Should I bring it in?" He asked the Lion, not expecting an answer, but it purred anyway. He took that as a yes. The Black Lion opened its huge mechanical jaws and took the ship between its metal teeth. He made sure the jaws were locked so it wouldn't fall out. Shiro sighed and moved on through space to where the castle was stationed on a planet in the next system.

     He radioed Allura, asking her to open a wormhole so that he could get back quicker. He warned her that he was bringing in some kind of ship and told her that Pidge should be there when he got there: she would freak out about the ship.

     "Right away, paladin," the Princess answered. Then Shiro saw a large, luminescent circle open up in the space ahead of him, the stars inside the circle swirling until it was some kind of vortex. As he flew through, the viewport which had once shown darkness and distant stars instantly lit with dazzling daylight and vivid colors.

     The huge, white castle ship sat vertically in a low valley covered with tall green grasses and strange orange flowers that reached up into the air. Large cliffed mountains surrounded the castle on one side, shading all but the tips of the tall towers.

     Shiro landed the Black Lion in its hangar, and as he descended to the floor, the Lion set the strange capsule and the orange rock down beside him. Pidge came running in with an armful of devices, her hair flopping up and down with every step. She bounded over to the capsule. "Whoaaaaa, this is so cool. This isn't any tech I've ever seen before!" Her green and white sneakers squeaked as she came to a sudden halt.

     Shiro looked down at the big orange crystal he had gotten from the planet just as Coran and Allura came into the hangar. Pidge buzzed around the little ship with a sensor-like thing and announced, "It's so small for a ship. Coran, help me get it open." Coran stood next to Shiro watching the excited youngster pull Allura over as he twisted the end of his mustache with his fingers.

     "I'll be there in a minute." He turned to Shiro and smiled, his red mustache pointing up at the sides and moving with his face. "Thank you for getting the mineral from the Imenium System, it's very rare and hard to get. You can't get a castle-ship in between those plates." Coran snapped his fingers and a little army of hovering metal robots, the size of the palm of his hand, flew through the air close to the floor. They enclosed the stone and picked it up, hauling it out the hangar door to only Coran knew where. Shiro scoffed, not meaning it rudely even if he was a little miffed.

     "Couldn't you have sent those with me? Do you know how hard that was to carry?"

     Coran looked at him like he hadn't even thought about it. "Now, there's an idea!" Shiro rolled his eyes. He took off his helmet as Coran walked away, shaking a cloud of red dust out of his hair. “Great.”

     Coran soon became occupied with the little ship. He put his hands on the sides, rubbing them up and down, maybe looking for some kind of latch, Shiro didn't know. He was occupied with thoughts of a shower. He'd probably steal some of Lance's shampoo to get all the dirt out of his hair.

     Suddenly, a loud mechanical hiss echoed through the chamber and Pidge gave a high-pitched squeal. She jumped away, hiding behind Allura, but peeking out from behind her back. Coran didn’t move away from it, suggesting that he had accomplished his goal of opening it. The one-way viewport on the small ship had rolled away, displaying what was inside. No- not a "what" as Shiro would have thought.

     As he came closer to the ship, cautiously stepping around Pidge's instruments on the floor, he saw what had frozen everyone. A woman laid inside the pod, her arms by her sides and her face and top half of her body were illuminated by glowing blue lights. Her hair was long, almost as long as Princess Allura's if not longer, and the dark reddish-blonde strands framed her pale face. As Shiro leaned onto the side of the pod to get a closer look, he saw that her cheeks were spattered with freckles.

     "She's human," he said, amazed. He saw two IVs in her forearms, a milky white liquid slowly moving into her body on both sides. Coran leaned into the open pod beside him. "How did a human get this far from Earth without the ability to wormhole? Moreover, what kind of tech is this?"

     "I don't know..." Shiro reached out to touch her forearm he examined the IV closer and saw that the blue veins you could normally see in your forearm weren't blue, and he couldn't make them out against her vanilla skin. "She could have wormholed, but it's highly unlikely. She's in cryo-sleep. Could have been drifting for years.”

     Pidge shoved her way between them, standing on her tippy-toes to see into the pod's opening. "We need to get her out of there and wake her up!" Shiro couldn't stop staring at the woman. Her red-blonde hair was too long to be manageable, and he felt like she had been asleep for a long, long time. Coran nodded his head in agreement. "I'll make the robots take the pod to the medical bay. Pidge, you come with me and help me figure out a way to get her out without hurting her. We have no idea how fragile her body may be."

     Allura was by Shiro now, almost without making a sound. She smiled at Shiro a second before gently pushing him out of the room. "I'll take care of them. You should go shower. I'll let you know if anything new happens." Shiro gave her a small smile in return. He left the hangar then, helmet in hand, going to his room and leaving the chaos behind him. To be honest, he was really tired and dirty and in need of a good day of sleep. But lately... sleep would exhaust him more than being awake.

     He dropped his suit and underclothes in a machine that would clean them for him while he showered. Looking at himself in the mirror, he grimaced. Not because was he covered in a good dusting of orange, but because of what remained of his old life. His scars and... his arm. They took a part of him he could never get back. His mechanical arm was alien- worse than the feeling people felt when they got an organ transplant or something like that. It was not skin and muscle, yet he could control it with his brain just like his actual arm. As many times as Pidge discretely begged him to let her examine it, he couldn't let her. He couldn’t have more people poke and prod at him, no matter who they were. He knew she wasn't going to hurt him or ridicule him in any way, but that didn't stop his brain from trying to tell him that he was less than whole: less than everyone else.

     The bathroom was made of clean, sterile, white tile. It looked like marble but it wasn't something from Earth. He reached behind him to turn on the shower. Hot water and steam sprayed loudly down to the large, tiled shower floor. He took a calming breath and stepped in. The hot water cascaded over his sore, tired muscles. He allowed the water to dampen his hair and watched the white floor darken with the dirt streaming off his body.

     A few minutes later, his body was finally free of itchy red dust, and he was brushing his teeth while making a puddle of water on the tile on the ground. He stared at his arm in the mirror. He couldn't feel the drops of water trailing down the silver metal.

     ***

     Shiro was lying in his bed, facing down as he slept, his arms wrapped around the pillow underneath him. He tossed and turned, but slept heavily. His hair was crazy with bedhead. The door opened slowly, and the lights automatically came on.

     Allura padded into the room, barefoot and wearing one of Hunk's large hoodies. All of her white hair spilled out behind her. She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked down at Shiro, smiling kindly. The lights had failed to wake him up, so she set a hand on his toned, bare shoulder.

     "Shiro?" He stirred, his eyes opening. "We found out how to wake the girl up."  
Allura moved her hand from his shoulder and stood up, crossing her arms in the comfort of the hoodie that swallowed her up. "Get dressed and come see us in the medical bay. It's really quite fascinating."

     All he had to say was, "I will." She nodded, understanding. She had noticed that he wasn't sleeping well and that he was depressed. About what, she wasn't quite sure. She did know that it had to do with his arm and the people who took it from him. She could always see a darkness lingering in his eyes when he thought about it.

     Allura left the room, the lights turning off behind her. Shiro sat up in the bed, miffed at his hair, which had dried in a weird array of spikes while he slept. He patted it down with his hands, one feeling hard and warm.

     A few minutes later he was walking into the medical bay. He wore a black, long-sleeved shirt and grey pants, his comfortable clothes. Coran was standing next to a large bed, the girl laying down on it, unconscious and wrapped in covers. Shiro assumed she was cold. Coran was messing with a machine that had a few buttons and screens. As Shiro came closer, Allura noticed him and her eyes went wide with gentle excitement.

     "That white liquid that was in her veins is what's keeping her asleep: a powerful sedative of some kind." Shiro nodded, coming to stand next to the bed. He crossed his arms, tucking his heavier metal arm over his normal one. "How will you wake her up?"

     Coran held up a needle that was attached to a tube. "I'm going to use this machine to clean her blood. Like before, she'll have two IVs, but this time, one will be drawing her blood, sending it through the machine to the second, which will inject it back into her body. Hopefully, when the sedative is gone, she'll wake up." Coran messed with the machine some more before deciding it was ready.

     Shiro couldn't help but wince when Coran injected the needle into the girl's forearm. He hoped Allura didn't notice: she was always more observant than he'd like. Coran took another needle, this one also attached to a tube from the machine and stuck it carefully in the other arm. He pressed a few buttons on the machine, and it started with a low hum. Light pink blood entered the tube and slowly went into the machine. Shiro watched with fascination as clean, oxygenated, crimson blood came slowly into the other tube.

     "Now," Coran said, "this could take a few hours to clean all the blood at the slow rate her heart is beating, but it'll get done. Maybe she'll even get to breathing better since her blood is getting a good amount of oxygen from the machine."

     Shiro nodded his head. "Then we wait."


	2. Chapter 2: When She Wakes Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team deals with the new stranger as more and more questions about her arise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with my story and deciding you wanted to read the next chapter. Please comment any ideas you have about the future of the story, or any comments you have in general. Thanks :)

**CHAPTER 2**

 

     It was almost the middle of the night- or what hour they had declared night to be, as the planet they were on had an almost endless daylight cycle- when the girl started to stir. Shiro had worked out a deal with Allura and Coran that they would watch the girl in shifts so that someone would be there for her when she woke up from her cryo-sleep. Both Coran and Allura had taken their shifts before Shiro. They had argued about it: Shiro wanted to take the first shift, but Allura insisted he go to sleep. Of course, she knew how sleep-deprived he was.

     Shiro was sitting in an uncomfortable metal chair at the foot of the girl's bed when he heard a heavy sigh echo from the girl's lungs. He watched her closely, hardly daring to blink, as she did nothing more.

     Minutes later, he saw her face change from the passive, emotionless face it had been all this time. Her eyebrows furrowed ever so slightly and her nose scrunched as in distaste to something she was dreaming about.

     Shiro looked at the tube where the blood exited her body: the white chemical still lingered in the mixture, the blood going from a light pink when it first started circulating to watery red. It wasn't yet the dark crimson it should be.

     The door to the chamber slid open with a swish, and Shiro looked to the doorway. Keith came in, wearing his red jacket as always, with a tray bearing food and drink. He swished his hair out of his eyes with a flick of his head. "Hey.”

     "Hey, man," Shiro answered, his voice low and tired. He accepted the tray from Keith and sat it in his lap. "Thanks."

     Keith sat down on another chair a few feet away, tucking one of his feet under his body and letting the other hang off the edge. "Hunk made it. Not bad for space food." Keith brooded silently as he usually did, unsympathetic and callous. He looked at the girl but didn’t show any outward expression except apathy.

     Shiro started to eat, silently tasting the strange food that he couldn't identify. "What's everyone else up to?" It was about "morning" time and most of the castle would be up and doing something. Except for Lance, of course, who was probably snoring away in his room.

     Keith sighed as if he was trying to remember. "Well... Coran and Pidge are poking around in that pod thing and they say they're still waiting for an analysis of the white stuff. Hunk is probably off making food or making some weird machine with no purpose. Lance is snoring on the couch in the common room. He fell asleep after breakfast. And Allura's with her dad.

     Shiro nodded. Everyone was busy doing something, which brought to the forefront of his mind how bored he currently was. While he enjoyed the silence, he hated that it gave him time to think. He hated that the corrosive thoughts that plagued his dreams made appearances in his waking moments, and made him feel no less dejected than when he slept in the privacy of his own white, sterile bedroom. He should really put up some posters or get a fish or something, anything to break up the monotony.

     He picked up the glass of his tray to take a drink of the cool water and had to concentrate really hard not to drop it. He forgot how easy skin could hold things until he tried to hold a glass with his metal hand. The metal was an inconvenience. He was right-handed, and when the Galra replaced his dominant hand with a cyborg one, he found that many of the tasks he used to do had to switch to his left hand. He could write, but it was sloppy. Drinking was annoying but possible.

     He remembered shaking someone's hand too hard and bruising their skin, not being able to feel how hard he was squeezing.

     Later, well after Keith had left and his shift was halfway over, Shiro fell asleep. Sitting sideways in the metal chair, his head tipped back and his throat exposed and on display. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed and shifted, going still again.

     Suddenly, all the machinery hooked up the girl started beeping. Noisy alarms sounded urgently through the large empty room, startling Shiro awake. As he jumped to his feet, he saw that the girl's eyes were open- she was crying- and thrashing in terror in the bed, trying to get out

     "Stay calm! No one is trying to hurt you. Hey-" The girl tossed her legs over the edge of the bed and started clawing at the IVs in her arms. "Stop, those are helping you.”

     Shiro ran around the side of the bed but stopped when her face flashed with a fear so intense, it brought back how he felt at the mercy of the Galra. For this reason, he held his hands up in the air away from her. He didn't know what the girl had been through but it seemed as if it had been very traumatic. He saw the same expression on himself when he had a nightmare. She stared at his arm, the metal one, as if he was going to lunge forward and hurt her with it. She stared like she knew where it came from.

     "I'm not going to hurt you. Please, don't touch the IVs, they're cleaning your blood. Someone had you sedated in cryo-sleep. We don't know how long." The girl's light vanilla face went white, but she didn't say anything. Now that her eyes were open, Shiro could see that they were a warm, auburn-colored brown that completed the unique look of freckles and strawberry blonde hair. Weak pants of air came and left her pale lips. The girl was older than the other Paladins, Shiro thought, but not older than him.

     After an awkward silence, Shiro decided to try to make her feel more relaxed. He stood from his crouched, cautious state, slowly so as not to startle the freckled woman, and said, "I'm Shiro.”

     The door slid open and the girl's head snapped to it. Coran came rushing through, alarmed by all the noises of the machines. "Shiro, what's going on? Is she a- Oh, she's awake." He slowed down to a cautious trot as he approached the bed and stood next to Shiro.

     "Please," Coran said in a gentle voice, "don't mess with the IVs. What's your name? Where are you from?" He went to the machine and checked something on the screens. He looked at the girl, but she wasn't answering him, only perching cautiously on the edge of the bed like she was about to run.

     Shiro understood how she felt. "You're safe here with us. No one can hurt you here, so please, sit back and let the machine finish making you better. Once your blood is clean, we can get you something to eat, yeah?" The girl watched him like a hawk, but nodded and sat back in the bed, lifting her legs up and crossing them in front of her. She folded the white fabric of the castle's equivalent of a hospital gown over her legs. Yet, she remained silent.

     Coran tried talking to her again. "Can you tell us your name?" He sat at the foot of her bed, finished with the machine. The girl paused for a long while, prompting Coran to raise his eyebrows, and shook her head. "But you understand English?" A slow nod.

     Shiro sighed. She couldn't tell them her name, so he guessed she didn't know what it was. Did she have amnesia like he did? He asked her that and received a head shake as the girl looked at her hands, calloused and frail. Something else, then. Her long hair seemed to be bothering her as she went to touch it. She was careful not to tug on the IVs as she braided the long strands into a single side braid. She didn't have a tie, so she tied a loose knot in the end. Shiro smiled slightly- she was smart.

     Shiro pulled up the metal chair closer to the bed and sat down in it. "Are you from Earth?" The girl nodded but looked down at her lap with a face of confusion. Her eyes blinked a few times, quickly, before she looked at Shiro.

     He froze.

     Her stare was so strange like she was staring into his soul with just as much pain and suffering as he saw when he looked at himself in the mirror. He felt like she was reading him like a book, his past and his pain. It was like she knew what he'd been through.

     Coran fidgeted with his mustache's tips. "I estimate that your blood will be clean in an hour or so. I'll come back with some food and disconnect you from the machine." As he stood from the girl's bed, he looked at Shiro. His eyes seemed to say 'look after her and don't let her up' very seriously. He turned his back with an elegant, self-important twist and left the room, the door closed behind him.

     He would no doubt rush off to Allura to tell her of the news. Right after the door had slid closed, it opened again, and Shiro thought Coran had forgotten something. Instead, he heard two sets of familiar footsteps approaching. Shiro smiled calmly at Pidge and Hunk (sans-hoodie), who always seemed to be seen together. Though Shiro knew there was nothing romantic about their relationship, their friendship was one of the strongest. They always got along and understood each other's tech jargon.

     They were smiling kindly at the girl, who had yet to say a word. Shiro decided he would start introductions. "This is Pidge," she gave a small, shy wave and pushed her glasses back, "and Hunk."

     The girl looked uncomfortable. She lowered her head in greeting and raised it slowly as if any quick movement would discombobulate her. She looked at Shiro again, like she was reading him, making him feel naked. Her eyes found his arm cautiously once again, before she looked around at the rest of the room, at the two rows of empty beds, and the shelving that held various strange medical supplies and machines.

     The healing pods were in their circular arrangement in the next room through a large, open archway. Pidge stepped up next to the bed. "I found this in your pod, and I thought it might be important to you." She held up a small drawstring bag, barely the size of her palm. It was dark blue and closed with a darker, shiny cord tied hastily in a couple of knots. The girl's eyes went wide again as she reached out for it. Pidge complied immediately with a smile, satisfied that she'd done something helpful.

     She turned this smile on Shiro next. "I found out what was inside the white stuff." The girl worked at the knots on the bed, picked at them with her teeth for a second before giving up. Her shoulders stooped and she gave into anguish. Before Shiro could say anything, hunk had reached his hand out timidly and asked, "May I?" The girl seemed to weigh her options. She nodded slowly and sat the bag in Hunk's patient hand.

     Pidge looked up into Shiro's eyes, silently waiting for his father-like attentions to turn to her again before she continued. "The white color was pigmented with mostly a sedative like Coran said, but it was also 4% pure quintessence."

     Shiro was taken aback. "That white-yellow stuff we saw on the Galran ship?"

     "Yeah. It seemed to fuel her body in small amounts and prevent damage from the time elapsed while asleep! Theoretically, it could sustain her for years! Coran and I still have no idea how old she is, or how she got here. The pod she came in wasn't meant to be a separated from a larger ship. Somehow, she avoided hitting asteroids and planets."

     Shiro pondered this information. "It's almost like she was pointed in this direction for a reason. If she had continued on her path, where would she eventually end up?"

     Pidge shrugged her narrow shoulders. "I don't know. I have no way of finding out which way she was going as there was no piloting system in the pod. Just the machinery to keep her alive and sedated. No digital files, no trace of alien language anywhere.”

     Hunk had dug a small screwdriver-looking tool out of one of his pockets and had just undone the knots on the girl's bag. As he handed it back, her eyes seemed to smile at him in thanks, but still didn't say anything. She had confirmed that she knew English but didn't speak. Maybe she couldn't speak at all...

     Color returned to her cheeks, making her skin a warmer vanilla color. The freckles on her cheeks stood out less, being just darker than her skin tone. Her pretty hazel eyes found him staring, and she looked away, busying herself with the bag.

     On her palm, she poured out what looked to be a clump of jewelry from Earth. It couldn't have all been one thing as the chains were of varying colors and styles. She went to untangling these and looked at Hunk nervously. He chuckled and sat on the bed in front of her crossed legs and just kindly helped her untangle the little mess of jewelry. She regarded him with caution but seemed to relax a bit.

     She touched the IV tubes in her forearms, wincing. Shiro's heart reached out to her. He hated that they had to hurt, but cleaning her blood was necessary, it seemed. He didn't pretend to know anything about the situation.

     Shiro pulled Pidge into a small side-hug. "Thanks, Katie." He said it quietly so that the others couldn't hear. As Hunk was untangling what looked to be a silver bracelet from a necklace, he asked the girl what her name was. She handed him a piece that was already separated from the group. It was too big to be a bracelet as Hunk held it up in his large hand- maybe an anklet? Shiro let go of Pidge and went to look over Hunk's shoulder.  
There was cursive writing engraved on the little coin-shaped disk: Harlow. Hunk turned it over to read the other side.

     _'With love, Mom and Dad.'_


	3. Chapter 3: Out of Time

 

**Chapter 3**

     By the time an hour was up, Harlow had untangled and adorned all her jewelry. Shiro could tell each piece was close to her, that each had its own story. The anklet from her mom and dad, a necklace, a silver ring with a shiny blue aquamarine crystal, and a bracelet. These were probably the only things she had from Earth.

     Eerily, she still hasn’t spoken a single word. If anyone made a sudden move or noise, she would flinch away from them. If someone spoke too loudly, she would always look down and close in on herself. It made Shiro nervous for her as him and his friends tried to adapt to her and she to them. It was obvious she wasn’t used to being around people. At least, not people who were kind to her. He had no way of knowing what kind of horrors had befallen her since she left their home planet.

      Everything about her brought up questions. What year did she leave Earth and how? Who was she with, and how did she get into a cryo pod and end up in the desolate Imenium system? And furthermore, who had caused this fragile girl to flinch so badly? Who would be so abusive, and for what reason?

      Coran came back at the end of the hour with a tray. He sat it in Hunk’s waiting hands and went to Harlow’s bedside to check her IVs. He nodded. “Looks like you're all fixed up. I'm going to take the IV out of this arm and let the machine put all the blood back before I take out the second.”

      Harlow nodded. Shiro noticed she was trembling as she tried to hold her forearm still. Coran smiled weakly at her and nodded once to let her know he was about to pull out the needle. As the warm metal slid out of her skin, she hissed through her teeth, but was strong and didn't pull away. Shiro flinched again, plagued suddenly by a flashback. Harlow watched him out of the corner of her eye. Like Allura, she knew. Somehow...

      Coran quickly pressed a gauze to the hole that was filling up with blood. He wrapped a long white bandage around her forearm.

      Hunk smiled kindly and encouragingly at her. “Good job.” He lifted up the tray of space food with a goofy grin. “Hungry?” he asked.

      Coran gestured Shiro away from the bed towards the door. “May I speak to you outside?”

      The apprehension he had been feeling came bubbling up like lava from a fissure. “Sure. Of course.” He followed Coran out the door and waited until the door closed behind them.

      “What’s going on?”

 Coran took a deep breath. “I figured out where the ship is from. Or, more accurately, when.”

 

***

      “So you're saying that her pod is over one hundred fifty years old?”

      Coran and Shiro were standing in a large hangar beside the pod. Empty now, the inside was spacious enough to inspect scientifically.

      “The quintessence kept her alive and fed her body. Now, this is where it gets even crazier. This pod? It’s Galran.”

      Suddenly it made sense. Harlow was in the hands of the Galra, the only monsters Shiro knew that could inflict such damage on them both. While Shiro doesn't think she was experimented on as he was, he prayed she didn't receive even worse treatment. He knew the Galra were capable of so much more than what they did to him.

      “Oh, Coran. That's why she flinches away from me.” He felt dizzy. He had to sit down on the cold hangar floor. “Coran, what if they did to her what they did to me?” He felt himself shiver all over, goosebumps raising and his heartbeat spiking quickly.

      Coran sighed, squatting down to put and hand on Shiro’s shoulder. “I had thought about that. She doesn't have any metal parts. But, they might have done something to her, something more mental than physical. It might be why she won't talk. They could have conditioned it into her psyche.” Coran rubbed his hand over his arm, trying to calm him down. He said nothing, but he felt affection for the quirky redhead. “She can understand our language at least, so that's a good thing. We need to figure out a way to communicate. Well, a way for her to communicate with us further than just nodding and shaking her head.”

      Shiro started to regain his balance, fighting off old memories and feelings of terror from his time with the Galra. Coran helped him to stand. “So, Harlow must have left Earth over a hundred and fifty years ago. We hadn’t even _left_ the planet that long ago. The experience must have been so traumatic for her.”

      Coran fumbled with some colored wires sticking out of a missing side panel of the pod like weeds through a fence. “The Galra, or someone else who would eventually give Harlow to the Galra, had to have come to Earth and abducted her.”

      “Yeah.” Shiro agreed.

      The hangar door slid open with a hiss. Coran stood up from his crouched position and Shiro, who had been holding his head in his hands looked up to see Hunk. Hunk’s face was alarmed, spurred on by a matter of importance. “Guys, I think you need to see this. It's about Harlow.”


	4. Chapter 4: Severed

**Chapter 4**

      He didn't tell them anything on the rushed jog back to the infirmary, Hunk’s exhausted pants echoing through the chambers of the hallways. When they finally reached the door, Hunk stopped before it could open. “Be careful, she’s scared.”

      They nodded curtly to him before going through the large doors. Immediately, Shiro saw Pidge and Lance off to the left standing in the aisle between the opposite rows of beds. Lance, still in his slippers and robe, was standing behind Pidge, who was wearing a look of sympathy.

      Harlow’s tray was on a table beside the bed, untouched. She had the drink in her hands with the straw in her mouth. How strange, Shiro though. She moved her whole jaw to pull the liquid into her mouth. It must have been thick like the malts back on earth. A blush covered her cheeks as she held the attention of the room. Coran followed Shiro past the vacant beds to where Harlow was sitting up. She had uncrossed her legs and settled against the wall behind her with two pillows cushioning her back.

      “What is it,” Shiro asked Pidge. She stared at him from behind her glasses with big, doe-like eyes. But instead of talking to him like he expected, she looked to Harlow. Shiro’s eyebrows furrowed in concern.

      “Can you show him?” Harlow hesitated. Shiro tried to ignore the rising tension as Harlow sat the cup down on the table next to the tray and the untouched food. _Please don’t reveal any robotic body parts,_ he thought to himself.

      “You’ve got to come closer,” Pidge advised. Shiro did as told and ended up close to Harlow’s bedside. Pidge pushed him even closer. His thighs were up against the cushion and the soft blanket covering it. Harlow cleared her throat uncomfortably. She looked up at him with her beautiful auburn eyes and opened her mouth. At first, Shiro had no idea what was going on, and he listened for a noise and searched her face for anything out of the ordinary, besides him now leaning over her like he was a doctor examining his patient’s vitals.

      But then he understood.

      The inside of Harlow’s mouth was empty, where there should have been a tongue, there were the short tips of severed tendons.

      “Oh…” Shiro was taken aback. His fingertips lightly touched the underside of her jaw. He couldn't stop staring into the empty space, thinking about how this happened and what it must have been like for this girl, this fragile, abused girl to be held down watch while a knife cut out her tongue.

      The tongue was necessary for chewing and swallowing food, and for speaking. It was no wonder the girl hadn't said anything: any noise her voice made would come out a garbled mess.

      He felt Coran lean over his shoulder and look inside too. He stepped back by Pidge. Harlow allowed him a few seconds to look before she closed her mouth. Her face wrinkled in pain from an unknown cause. The severed nerves could have been affected by the temperature change of letting the chilly castle air in her mouth.

      “Oh, Harlow, I’m so sorry.” Shiro was angry. Not only was he angry at the Galra for what they took from him, but for what they took from her. And he didn't even know the extent of what they did to her. It was probably worse than they knew so far.

      Eyes wide, Harlow nodded but still looked like she was getting overwhelmed. “Guys, I think we should all give her some space.” Hunk, Pidge, and Lance all seemed like they didn't want to leave, but knew they had to listen to their leader and trust that he knew what was best.

  
      Coran set about taking out the other IV, the tube had gone clear, as the team left and Shiro sat down in the metal chair that he was becoming familiar with. Harlow now had two bandages on her arms, but at least now she was awake. Shiro had to find a way to feed her and to ask her what kinds of food she could eat.

      “I think the space goo would be easy to eat.” At Harlow’s look of disgust, he amended, “We call it space goo because the Altaen name is too hard to pronounce. It's really good. You might like it.” Shiro took the small bowl of green goo off the tray and handed it to the girl, the white spoon sticking out of the top like a flagpole on a hill.

     Eyeing it, she took a small spoonful and put it in her mouth, using her lips to clean the spoon. Her face remained passive as she tilted her head back to move the goo to where she could swallow it.

      “That’s good.” Shiro really didn't want her to starve. He sat in the metal chair while she ate, busying himself with nothing. A comfortable silence enveloped the room. Shiro really hoped that in time, she would be comfortable to share her story with him and perhaps, find comfort in him knowing and understanding what she’s been through.

      Shiro didn’t want to tell her how long she’d been in the cryo pod yet. He thought the stress of waking up in the company of strangers as enough for now. Harlow finished the food goo quite fast, and Shiro understood why. She hadn’t eaten in over one hundred fifty years. Her stomach was probably craving something to fill it.

      After a few minutes, Harlow was just sipping on her drink when she started to look sickly. Shiro stood up and was about to reach toward her instinctively when she flinched back. He stopped moving immediately. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? Was it the goo?”

      He moved back a step, watching her relax her shoulders. Her face paled. Tiny drops of sweat started to form on her brow. Shiro jabbed his wrist communicator. “Coran, Princess, there’s something wrong with Harlow. You need to get here as quick as you can!”

 

 


	5. Chapter 5: Quintessence

**Chapter 5**

     Shiro cautiously watched the girl curl up, hugging her knees. She shook her head at something invisible. Shiro was mildly panicking. “Harlow, what can I do? How can I help if I don’t know what’s wrong?” 

     He paced impatiently, glancing at the hangar door. Harlow let out a low moan. Laying on her side facing Shiro, she opened her eyes briefly. Shiro gasped. Her pupils were yellow and glowing.  

_ Yellow eyes stared, sneering viciously above him. He felt the metal restraints bite into the skin of his forearms, legs, and his neck.  The witch released a maniac laugh and left his side to talk to her druids. Through the ringing in his ears he heard her gritty voice command worse experiments for his future. He felt the horrid bite of a knife in the flesh of his arm- _

     Shiro gasped and stumbled back away from Harlow’s bed. They seemed to shiver in fright at the same time. Sweat broke out on his skin again and he had but one thought, a desperate plea for the witch to let him go. He must have said that out loud, because then Allura was behind him, hugging his shoulders, her cheek touching his as she held his torso up. 

     “Shh, you’re okay. You’re safe. It’s Allura. You’re safe...” 

Though his vision was blurry and his heart rate crazy, he calmed at the sound of her voice. In front of him he saw the shape of Coran at Harlow’s bedside. Allura helped him through his episode. Embarrassingly, his chest hurt, and he couldn’t breathe in all the way, though he kept trying. Allura’s arms were warm, and he tried to focus on that. It was a great contrast to the cold he was remembering, the phantom shivers that ran down his spine.

 

Coran was frantically dealing with Harlow. 

 

    “She’s showing symptoms of withdrawal. Withdrawal from what?” 

    Shiro heard the hangar door slide open and several pair of footsteps run inside: the rest of the team. He told himself he had to get it together. They’d never seen him have a panic attack. He was their leader and needed to be strong for them. He breathed deeply, and within a matter of seconds, his panic was disguised and he nodded, his cheek warm against Allura’s. 

     She helped him stand and he was on his feet by the time the team got to Harlow’s bed. 

     “What’s going on?” 

     “Is she okay?” 

     Coran harshly shushed everyone, his hair flying around his face when his head dramatically flashed from one holographic monitor to the next. 

     In the bed, Harlow was curled up on her side in pain, her eyes closed and her skin shiny with sweat. Her body vibrated with spasms. Shiro thought he was the only one who saw her yellow eyes glowing before she closed them. 

Coran briskly went to the side of Harlow’s bed. He opened her eyelid to see her whole eyeball glowing yellow. “Her body’s cravings the quintessence like an addict! After all, she’s been surviving off of it for years. Cleaning her blood of it has caused her to go into a fit.”   


     “How do we stop it,” asked Shiro, worriedly hovering on the opposite side of the bed. 

     “I guess we’ll have to get her some more quintessence until we can come up with a plan to wean her off it. Stopping cold-pundersnat can cause fatal results.” 

     Keith came forward and got Shiro and Coran’s attention. “Do we have some anywhere in the castle?” His mellow voice was firm and level.  


     Coran pointed to the ceiling. “We have. Whole store of it in the healing pod room. The pods are run off it. Come on!”    


     Keith rushed away, Coran hot on his heels, pushing past Hunk and Lance. Hunk looked sadly at Shiro. The leader knew Hunk was fond of the girl already and was in pain watching her be this way. He needed to get them out. 

“Everybody leave, please.” He waved a hand behind him at his friends while he watched Keith’s running figure disappear into the next room. There was protest immediately, but he put his hand up, signaling that there was no room for debate. He felt Allura touch his arm gently before walking away, encouraging the other paladins to leave the room with her. He heard the team’s retreating footsteps and groans of disapproval, and was left alone with Harlow. She twitched on top of the bed, clutching her stomach. Her fingernails were making angry scratches in her skin.   


“Harlow,” he said, stepping closer her figure on the white covers. She didn’t react to him this time, so he considered it might be safe to comfort her in any way he could. He sat on the bed and cautiously touched her shoulder. She leaned into his touch, whimpering. “Hey, hey. It’s okay, Coran’s on it.”    


He scooted further on the bed so that he could sit better. Harlow, to his surprise, laid her head on his thigh, curling up to his leg like she was hugging a pillow. She was still shivering and her face was flushed pink. It made Shiro’s heart hurt for her. He so badly wanted to fix what was wrong. “Harlow?” Shiro asked, rubbing his large hand on her shoulder gently. Her face squinted in pain before her eyes opened and looked straight up at him, filled with a yellow glow. There were dark gray tear stains on his pant leg.   


_ It hurts. _   


Shiro gasped, his eyebrows furrowing. “Did you...?”    


“I’ve got it!” Coran and Keith skidded back into the room. Coran had a large vial of quintessence in hands as he rushed into the room. Stopping beside the bed, Coran handed the vial to Shiro and rushed back to the monitors to do something else. Keith connected eyes with Shiro as he wrestled the cap off the container. He nodded once, his eyes determined, and then turned his back to exit the room.    


Shiro skimmed his fingertips along Harlow’s jaw. “Here, H. How do you want to take this?” As soon as he had mentioned the quintessence, her eyes shot open and zeroed in on the glass container. She sat up as fast as she could in her state and gestured for the glass. Shiro brought it to her face and her peach-colored lips met the rim and took one sip.    


At the taste, Harlow jumped closer to Shiro, who still guided the vial. Now, she was almost on top of his lap, reminding him of a starving animal who was being fed by hand. She lapped at the vial, swallowing the glowing yellow liquid. She gave an involuntary moan  at the sensation of the quintessence, a shiver going down her body raising goosebumps on her arms. Her hands gripped his forearm over the black shirtsleeve, pulling the vial closer. Her nails bit into his skin, but not hard enough to cause him to lose concentration.   


Shiro tried not to spill anything, but a small stream of yellow went down her chin, probably due to her lack of a tongue, and splattered onto his pants. Shiro coughed.   


“Take it easy, H. It’s okay.” He watched her face as the desperation slowly faded away. Strands of her willowy hair started to come out of her braid and frame her fair face. Harlow drank over half the vial before pushing it away and collapsing back onto her bed.    


As Shiro replaced the lid, Harlow whimpered. Her hands trembled as they gripped the sheet under her, and her body curled into itself. Shiro was astonished to see a zap of yellow light move through her veins. It started from her face, then shot down her neck and into the rest of her body. Her head tipped back and her mouth opened in a silent gasp. After a few seconds, the glow faded out, and Harlow laid still, except for her small panting breaths. 

 


	6. Chapter 6:

**Chapter Six**

 

Shiro didn’t know what to do for what seemed like the hundredth time that day. He set the quintessence down on her tray next to the space food from earlier. Harlow’s limbs were slack as her breathing turned back to normal. 

 

“Coran, what should we do now?”

 

The red-haired man had been staring at a display the whole time this was running. Shiro looked at it and saw a 3D picture of Harlow’s body in its current state on the bed. Her vital signs were in little windows next to the main picture. “I don’t know.” Coran said, “It seems that her body has been conditioned in some way to crave quintessence. The concentration of it in the sedative was not potent enough to warrant this kind of craving, so something must have happened to her before she was put into cryo-sleep and sent away.” 

 

Shiro couldn’t see his face clearly through the monitor’s picture, but he thought Coran’s face was blushing.

 

Harlow seemed to be sleeping now. Shiro stood up off the bed. He reached for the sheets that were kicked to off the end and pulled them over her bare legs up to her arms. The quintessence on her chin had absorbed into her skin without a trace. 

 

Shiro nodded at Coran and turned to leave the room to collect his thoughts. When he entered the hallway, he didn’t see Allura or teh paladins and was thankful for that. He headed toward his room. He thought about Harlow’s past. Coran had said her body craved quintessence like a drug. In the past, she must have had long exposure to it in order for her body to crave it like this.

 

And since she was with the Galra… he shuddered to think of the things they did to her. They took her tongue and who knew what else. 

 

He had heard her voice. Well, a voice, but it came from her. He didn’t hear it in his ears out loud, but more like he thought it. No, it was thought  _ to _ him. She had said ‘it hurts’ when she was in pain, he was so sure of it. It made sense that she had found some way to communicate without her tongue, though  _ how _ she did it, he had no idea. 

Shiro got to his room then and closed and locked the door behind him. He thought of Harlow again, how she reacted to the quintessence. There was something…  _ sexual _ about her craving of the substance. It was, somehow, the result of her time with the Galra, conditioned into her psyche and body. Shiro knew a lot about that. He shivered as he sat down on the edge of his bed and kicked off his boots. Coran had been monitoring her through the episode, and he decided to have an in-depth discussion about what happened to Harlow later after he’d had some time to think.

 

He laid back on top of the covers, the warmth of his body guarding against the castle’s usually chilly air. He touched the flesh of his forearm where Harlow’s nails had dug into it. About ten little red crescents dotted his skin. The marks were sensitive as he ran a finger over them.

  
  


**

 

When Shiro left his room again, it was time for another meal. To their body clocks, it was about one in the afternoon, and the paladins were getting hungry. Hunk was cooking up some more interesting space food in the kitchen when Shiro entered the dining hall. Pidge was already in there, seated in her usual chair, typing away on a laptop. Shiro settled down into his usual chair to the left of the head of the table. 

 

He heard a small exhale from Pidge’s direction. “Is she going to be okay?” 

 

Shiro knew she was talking about Harlow. “I hope so, Katie.”

 

Then the doors slid open with a quiet hiss and Lance came in, banishing the peaceful atmosphere in the room with the noise he usually brought with him. Today, he was humming some unidentifiable song, walking to the pointed rhythm he was making.

 

“Hey, guys,” he said, jutting his hips side to side before spinning in a complete circle and coming to a stop in a pose. Shiro smiled kindly at Lance as he sat down in his spot across the table. Shiro folded his hands together on the surface in front of his body an allowed a little machine to get him a drink of cool, fizzy liquid in a glass.

 

“How is Harlow?” Lance also received a drink from the robotic waitstaff, but his was a red-tinted drink. The castle had their favorite drinks memorized and would bring them those unless asked to do otherwise. 

 

“I think she’s going to be okay, Lance. I’m going to have a discussion with Coran about her medical issues, and try to establish a better means of communication, if you’d be willing to help me, Pidge.” He looked at the small girl cross-legged in her chair. She looked up at him with her big glasses, Matt’s glasses. He remembered Matt well like he had just seen him yesterday. Since he didn’t remember most of his year with the Galra, it had felt like a few days ago that he’s last seen his friend.

 

“Already on it,” Pidge said with a nod. “I’m designing a device that would allow her to speak out loud using her mind instead of her physical voice. The current problem is that I don’t know how to make a filter that will allow her to stop certain thoughts from being said out loud. Yet. I’m working on it.”

 

Shiro smiled at the young paladin, impressed greatly with her spunk and her genius. ”Thank you.” 

 

   **

 

Soon, everyone was joined at the table, and Hunks latest creation was laid out over the table. Allura sat at the head of the table with Coran to her left and the rest of the Paladins in their usual seats, digging into the foreign dishes. Shiro was just going to bite into a sponge-looking thing when his eyes caught a shape. Knowing everyone was in the room already, he stood up to greet their new guest. 

 

Harlow stood in the doorway in a gray shirt and pants, blending well with the castle walls except for her strawberry blonde hair. It was unbraided, falling freely behind her shoulders. The length of it still astounded him. She looked to be in better health than when Shiro saw her last. Her skin had more color and her muscles appeared to be more firm and sure of their movements. 

   Shiro walked to stand a few feet in front of her. He slyly blocked her from the eyes of everyone else in the room with his broad body. He nodded in a secret question, and she briefly nodded back. She was okay for now. He gestured, and she allowed him to show her to the chair next to his. 

Hunk brought a dish from the kitchen, smiling warmly. He sat it in front of her. “This should be easy to eat. It’s a lot like Jello.” 

Harlow shifted, not quite comfortable in the chair as Hunk and Shiro sat down. The castle machinery brought her water. She stared at the machinery curiously guarding her facial expressions. Shiro knew she had questions. She knew that the paladins were human, that she wasn’t in Galra hands. By the way she looked at Coran and the princess, she knew they weren’t human, and he sensed a natural distrust in her demeanor. 

        While they ate, Shiro also saw her look at his Galra arm. She was on his left side, the human arm side, but she was still cautious of it. 

        “I would have brought you food. You didn’t have to get up,” Shiro said very quietly as conversation resumed at the other side of the table. He took a drink of this water. Harlow used a spoon to eat the space Jell-O. She struggled to get it down, though, having to tilt her head back. 

         “How are you feeling?” He asked, knowing she could talk to him.

          His human hand was in his thigh when he felt her hand on his forearm, over where her fingernail cuts were. Since they were still red and angry, he hissed when she touched them. She moved her hand further down to the bare skin of his palm. She laid her hand flat over his like she wanted to hold his hand. Her skin was colder than his. 

_ Shiro.  _

        It was her voice again, soft, timid. Damaged. 

_ I am sorry about what happened before.  _

         Shiro looked around and found no one paying attention. Allura looked at him and smiled slightly, but continued her discussion with Coran. “Why does that happen to you?” His voice was soft and caring, father-like. 

        Her face scrunched and she removed her hand in recoil. Shiro felt that he had done something wrong. She wasn’t ready for this discussion. However, it was progress that she was talking to him. 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

 

        The rest of the meal passed with no more words from Harlow. The paladins helped Hunk clean off the table- the only demand Hunk made when he started cooking- when lunch was finished. The princess and Coran excused themselves to do something else, and Shiro, who normally helped clean up, attended to Harlow since he was the one she seemed to be less afraid of. 

 

       He showed her to a room near his and instructed her on how to use the shower. He showed her all the soaps and told her what each was for. All the labels were in Altean. She paid attention and made no move to touch him, so she didn’t want to talk. 

 

         She came to him when she was finished with her shower. He had told her he’d be in his room and he left the door open. She came in wearing the same gray clothes, but had a different pair of shoes on. He didn’t hear her when she came in. He was doing one-armed push-ups on the ground with his human limb, his back facing the door. He was used to hearing the door’s mechanical hiss when someone entered. When he stood up, done with his sets, she was standing just behind the door frame, not quite in the room. 

 

         “I didn’t see you. Can I get you anything?” When she shook her head, he gestured to the edge of his bed and she sat cautiously, each of her hands holding the opposite elbow. She was still very timid, and Shiro didn’t want to think about why she was like that. Shiro was familiar with the Galra of today, but a hundred and fifty years ago it would have been very different. 

 

         “You have questions,” he said definitively. She nodded. He sat on the other end of his bed near his pillows and cautiously held his hand out. Hopefully, she trusted him enough to be able to ask him what she needed to. 

 

         Luckily, Harlow reached out to touch her palm to his again, the tips of her fingers grazing the sensitive skin of his wrist. Shiro was glad he figured out that she had to be touching him to talk to him. 

 

_ Where am I? _

 

         Harlow removed her hand then and folded it with her other one. Her skin was still cold. She stood up and went to the small window at the end of Shiro’s room. Shiro cleared his throat. “This is the Castle of Lions. It’s princess Allura’s now but before, it was her father’s ship.” Harlow stared out at the strange planet’s surface with its grasses. Shiro thought he should explain that, too. “We’re just parked on the planet for a while. We’re usually in space, though.” The light from the planet’s day cycle shined on Harlow’s face, making her wet hair a dark auburn color. Her arms were crossed over her chest in an insecure way. She closed her eyes and seemed to bask in the sun’s rays.

 

         After a minute, she came back to him to ask another question. She put her hand out in front of him and he met it with his.  _ I was frozen in a cryo chamber. How long? _

 

        Shiro had planned not to tell her this bit as he thought it would overwhelm her. But she asked. He was still touching her had when he said, “Coran and Pidge extracted information from the pod. It says it was running for a hundred and fifty years.” She gasped. He felt an intense wave of sorrow run through him, but it didn’t come from him. She snatched her palm away and walked back to the window. 

 

         He couldn’t see her face but he thought she was crying. She pulled all of her hair over one shoulder and began to separate it into sections. She collected herself as she braided her hair to the bottom, the twisted strands stretching out several feet. Shiro just waited patiently, understanding how it took time to process these things. Since she had been gone so long, all her family and friends on Earth were dead by now. 

 

It was different for the paladins: they knew that they had only been gone a few months, and it was likely that everyone they knew was okay. Looking for their missing friends, but alive.

Harlow took a few more moments and then came away from the window back to Shiro. He held his human hand out, and she took hers slowly and set it on top of his. This time, instead of staring down at their hands, Harlow closed her eyes. Shiro felt a wave of energy come into him through her hand, and he almost pulled away when he flinched. He stayed and soon colorful images were dancing behind his eyes. 

 

_ The grass was cold beneath my feet at this time of night. The ground seemed to sink in when I stepped. A light breeze blew, and nothing disturbed the silence of the night. I held a sandwich in my small hand, snuck away from the table at dinner. It had a small, bumpy bite mark in the corner. _

 

__ _ I crept quickly to where I knew they were, cautious of getting caught. When I got close, I heard their little squeaks. “Hey Professor Meows. I know it’s late, but I brought you something.” I found the den hidden in the thick grass and pushed the sandwich inside. A grateful ‘meow’ came from the mamma cat. I smiled and sat back on my haunches and waited for her to come out. _

 

__ _ Soon, a light grey head poked out of the hole, followed by a sleek, furry body. The cat limped into my lap, rubbing herself all over my clothes. “Hi, mamma. You’re welcome. How are the babies?”  _

 

__ _ The cat mewled like she understood. She laid down in my lap, and I pet her with my little hands. I inspected the wound on her leg, making sure it was healing well. She was still having difficulty walking, so the only food she could get came from me.  _

 

__ _ I continued to pet the cat for a few minutes, listening to the squeaks of the babies in the den which were crawling all over each other searching and exploring with their eyes still closed. Professor Meows stayed until she got too hungry. With a departing rub she crawled back into the den to eat her sandwich and care for her kittens. I smiled to myself, standing up and starting back toward the house.  _

 

    I _smiled up at the moon, who watched over me on my journey. As I was looking up, I saw a big, shiny star and smiled at it, too._

 

_     Out of nowhere, I heard a loud, mechanical sound echo across the field. I looked around, then up at the sky, and noticed that the big star had gotten bigger. Eyes wide, I stared at it, not blinking in case I missed anything. I watched it grow bigger and bigger until it got so close it startled me. My heart was racing, but I couldn’t move, I just kept staring at the light.  _

 

_     The star got so close that it bent the trees over with its wind. Soon, its light was all I could see. I felt hands on me, tugging at my arms, moving me when I couldn’t move by myself. I heard voices:  _ Look at this one! Such a small one, he would like that. Such interesting coloring: we should take her.

 

_     I was taken, the light so bright, and then suddenly I saw nothing. Darkness. I couldn’t feel anything except cold metal and chilly air. I frantically reached around me to feel for anything but the cold metal bars. I followed them around, four corners, which means… I was in a box. A cage. I screamed until my lungs burned.  _

 

    Shiro gasped as Harlow disconnected from him. He knew that had been her memory. “That was the night you were taken?” Harlow sat down on the bed next to him. She had her eyes closed and she was breathing a little heavy. She nodded to his question. 

 

    “Thank you for showing me.” They sat in silence for a minute before Shiro decided to share something about himself as well. “When I was take n, I was already in space. The academy had sent us on a mission to Kerberos to take samples and explore. Pidge, you met her, she’s the small one. Her brother and father were on the mission with me when we were approached by an alien ship and taken captive.”

    Shiro watched Harlow as she sat beside him. He knew her mind was working, but her body put off a trained posture of apathy. She reached out to the space between them, not looking at him as he touched her hand again. 

_    You were a prisoner, just like me. How long? _

    “Over a year, I think. I hit my head really hard so I don’t remember much. It’s still coming back to me pieces at a time.” He put his hand back down and let her think. He knew she needed her space and was willing to be patient while she worked through all the new things that were running through her mind. “What about you? How long were you with them?” 

    As soon as he asked it, he wishes he could take the question back. He had asked the question gently, but it occurred to him that it would likely bring back bad memories she didn’t need to remember right now. 

_     Seven… Seven years, I think. I was taken when I was twelve. Time is weird up here, but I think it has been at least seven years. _

    “Oh my… Wow.” Shiro was taken aback. Seven years was a long, long time to be missing from home. It was no wonder she was discombobulated about the whole situation. She had been gone from Earth so long and kept as a prisoner to the Galra, forced to do who knew what for  _ seven  _ years. On top of that, she had been adrift in space for another century and a half, so she must be thinking about how all her friends and family were gone. 

    The Galra had cut her tongue out, obviously abused her, and caused physical and psychological conditioning that may be beyond his ability to reverse. Seven years away from her home, growing up in the presence of strange beings covered in fur and claws.

_     Tell me about everyone, _ Harlow asked as she touched him. She withdrew to the other side of the bed and sat against the wall, playing with the tip of her braid. Shiro adjusted to rest against his pillows where he could see her better. He began to tell her all he knew about each paladin, how they were at the Garrison and how they rescued him and left Earth. He told Harlow about the Blue Lion and how it led them through a wormhole to the castle and how they met Allura and Coran. He told her about Voltron and what a powerful force he was hoping that she would find a little security in knowing that she was safe here with them.

    When he told about everything up to present day, he was tired to hearing himself talk, and was relieved that there wasn’t more to the story yet. Harlow had been looking at him through most of the story, seeing him activate his Galra arm as non-threateningly as possible so she could understand how inhuman it really was.

    Shiro knew somehow through the looks she sent him that she understood how broken he felt. He could see the same brokenness in her. He could see the result of years of conditioning on her mind and body. She acted like a trained animal that had just been taken off a leash and didn’t quite know what to do with the freedom.

    “Well, it’s time for some more training with the paladins. You can come if you want to, but you’re more than welcome to stay here.” He gave her an option, just in case fighting between the paladins would trigger something in her. 

    Harlow got off the bed to stand beside him, her arms crossed over her chest. Shiro wanted her to be okay. “Will you be alright?” He looked into her auburn eyes, and he knew that she saw the deeper questions in his gray ones. Will you need more quintessence soon? Will you be okay around the fighting? 

    She nodded once and followed him out the door of his bedroom and through the castle halls to round up the paladins.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

 

    The castle was mostly peaceful for the next couple of days. Lance argued with Keith a lot, but that was quickly stopped with a command from their leader. Shiro wished they would get along better, especially since he was cautious about Harlow. She seemed to be doing fine on the outside, but he knew that she was just good at hiding her inner feelings and thoughts like he was. Lance and Keith's arguing was probably putting her on edge.

 

She didn’t communicate with anyone further than nodding or shaking her head. It seemed that Shiro was the only one she trusted to know about her abilities so far. They talked every now and then, her asking a question or him making sure she was doing okay, but they mostly watched over each other in silence. 

 

Shiro was getting worried that she would have another episode of withdrawals soon, so he carried a vial of quintessence with him without telling anyone about it. He would bring it out only when she needed it. 

 

His mind kept remembering back to when she had the episode, when her body was craving the substance so hard that it hurt and incapacitated her. And the way her body reacted as he was giving it to her… He shivered. She was likely embarrassed about it and he would not be bringing it up.

 

Shiro was encouraged, though, because he knew her voice still worked. She could still scream or yell if something went wrong, and someone would be around to hear. He would be much more worried about her if she couldn’t make any sounds at all. 

 

It was getting close to “night” time and Shiro could feel his mind start to get foggy. He was lucky that the near-constant daylight on this planet wasn’t doing much to throw off his natural sleep cycle. He would have more problems with his nightmares and anxiety giving him problems than the light. 

 

He was just about to find the princess to say goodnight when huge red alerts covered the viewport of the Castle’s main room. Allura was standing in the middle of the room by the main controls when Shiro sprinted into the room. “What’s going on,” he yelled out, skidding to a stop next to her. Coran came into the room behind him.

 

“Galra ships incoming!” Allura jabbed furiously at the screens, pulling up an image of a handful of huge ships streaming towards them through space. “They’ll be here in four doboshes!” Allura opened up a ship-wide announcement. “Team, we have Galra incoming. Get to your lions!”

 

Shiro started to scramble but paused when he saw Harlow in the doorway, clinging to the frame with wide, fearful eyes. He put his hands gently on her shoulders. “Just go stay by the princess. Take my seat and strap in.”

 

She nodded, and he sprinted for his lion.

 

Harlow watched Shiro leave before she moved further into the room. The princess and Coran were standing at the controls of the castle and hadn’t noticed her. She found the dark purple seat that matched Shiro’s armor and went toward it. Just as she was almost there, she heard it. 

 

“Princess Allura. Today will be the last time we see each other. I will end this.” 

 

Harlow dropped to the floor, her heart beating wildly in her chest and her limbs feeling like they were made of lead.  _ No, no!  He found me. _

 

Allura stared into the face of Sendak with his huge, fuzzy ears and fake glowing eye. “Team?” She asked over the channel. She got various answers back, but everyone was in their lions. “Sendak…” She sent a deathly stare towards the huge screen. Sendak looked around the room, his eyes met Coran’s which were equally as deathly, and then he saw something in the room that made him freeze.

 

“You? Impossible. I killed you, human.” Sendak looked furious. Allura spun to where he was looking and saw Harlow on the floor. “Oh no…” Harlow sunk lower to the ground under his stare, curling up into the fetal position with her hands over her ears. 

 

“Sendak!” Shiro’s voice rang over the system. “Your fight is with me!” And then Voltron pounded into the side of the lead ship. 

 

Coran was at Harlow’s side in a second. He barely touched her shoulder when she flinched, crying out. “Hey, it’s Coran. It’s Coran…” She opened her eyes and saw him. He saw her walls come down as she reached for him. He picked her up and carried her to the nearest seat: Shiro’s. 

 

He sat her down, and straps automatically coming around her since the castle was on alert. He touched her cheek gently and made her look at him. Her eyes were swimming with tears and emotions long suppressed. He felt like cursing when he saw the faint yellow glow. “It’s going to be okay. You’re safe in here. I promise. He can’t touch you again.” 

 

***

 

The paladins as Voltron pounded into the different ships. The ships were larger than those they’d fought before. Shiro led with confidence in his voice. “We need to keep them occupied here in space. If they get down to the castle, we’re done for. We have to keep them safe.” 

 

Voltron cut into the hard metal of one of the ships, and cut down the length of it, causing a bright explosion that propelled them toward another ship. The Galra were waiting for Voltron to get clear of the ships so they could shoot at him. Small fighters were scrambling around, trying to get good shots at the massive defender. 

 

“Hunk, shoulder cannon!” Voltron was beneath a ship and shot upwards with the powerful beam, getting under the ship’s thick armor and damaging it.

 

“Paladins! The castle is under attack!” Allura’s frantic voice called through the system at them. Shiro frantically looked around: one ship was missing. “Shit!” 

 

Voltron shot towards the planet’s surface immediately, finding not one, but three ships hovering a good distance from the castle, firing their ion cannons simultaneously at the castle shields. Shiro and the team attacked the closest ship, knocking it away an causing some kind of explosion inside. 

 

Lance cheered loudly. Through the comms, Shiro listened for the princess as they attacked the other two ships. 

 

“Coran, is she okay?” Allura voice came through his helmet, making his heart throb out of his chest. 

    “Princess, is something wrong with Harlow?” Shiro privately hailed the castle, knowing this discussion, if it was what he thought, wasn’t for the paladins’ ears. 

 

    “Harlow is having another episode,” Coran answered, sounding far-off. “I think it was triggered by Sendak. They must have known each other before. He recognized her. Shiro,” he took a breath that came out as a sigh, “he said it was impossible, that he had killed her.” 

  
  


 

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

 

Voltron destroyed most of the ships with minor injuries to the paladins. Two ships escaped them, flashing away as Voltron was distracted destroying the rest. Luckily, the castle’s defenses were still good from 10,000 years ago. They held up against the assault. 

 

    Shiro ran as quickly as he could to the main room after landing his lion in his hangar. As he skidded through the doorway, he saw only Allura. She saw his concerned face and pointed behind him, “Med bay. Quickly!” 

 

    Shiro made it just as Coran set Harlow down on the closest bed. She seemed to be suffering worse than last time, whimpering every time she was moved. When Coran saw Shiro, he put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m going to leave her to you. There’s nothing I can do.” He turned his back and made for the door, clicking a few buttons on the control panel. The lights around it turned red and when the doors slid closed behind him, Shiro heard a mechanical lock. 

 

    He turned his attention to Harlow, stripping off his armor quickly and leaving it on the floor. The quintessence he carried was in a vial attached to his belt. He removed it and set it aside on the bed. “Harlow, what happened?” He reached for her hand and crawled onto the bed beside her. 

 

    She curled up against him, wrapping her leg over his hip. She stared up at him with yellow-tinted eyes. Shiro flinched as Harlow closed her eyes and went to touch his face. He knew she was going to show him something. A bright purple light flashed in his vision, and then a form was coming into focus. 

 

_     “Such a good little human.” Shiro recognized Sendak’s voice immediately as his form came into focus. He looked down at his hands on the floor. The metal was so polished that he could see a reflection. Harlow stared back at him with yellow eyes, red-rimmed and huge. Her freckled cheeks were tear-stained. She looked younger by a couple years.  _

 

  _"You remember what to do to make the pain stop. Come here.” Shiro saw the feminine hands crawl across the floor, felt the hard, cold surface against the bare knees. Sendak was right in front of Harlow’s face, now. A clawed hand dug into her long hair and pulled her up, close to his groin. Her mouth dropped open in a scream at the pain. Shiro could feel that her tongue was freshly removed._

 

_     “Such pretty sounds…” Sendak cooed down as his other hand, not a mechanical one yet, raked a claw down her face. It caught on her bottom lip and split it, causing blood to leak down her chin. “Yes, little one.” _

 

    Shiro jumped as he came out of the memory. Harlow was crying, big tears falling down her cheeks. She looked like her hold on her feelings had broken. She was broken. 

 

    Shiro reached for the vial when Harlow moaned in pain. Her eyes rolled back and her fingernails scratched into his chest where she was holding on to his shirt. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought she drew blood again.

 

    He brought the vial to her lips and she drank greedily. Shiro tried to be more objective and observe her closely, but it was so hard when she was pressed up against him, every limb touching some part of him. He saw the yellow glow in her eyes get brighter as she blinked, and the lights ran down her body accompanied by a harsh shiver. 

 

    Harlow cried out, in pain or pleasure he couldn’t be sure. Slowly, she relaxed against him, laying her head down on his chest and releasing the pain. She reached for his hand. 

 

_     Shiro, I am so sorry. _

 

    “Hey, it’s okay. You can’t help it. Did… Was it Sendak that triggered it this time?” 

 

    Harlow nodded, hiding her face in his chest. Her chest shook with a sob. He wrapped his arms around her, hoping the gesture would make her feel safer. His chest ached where her nails had clawed him, and he made a mental note to ask her to file them down later. He thought about the memory she had shown him this time and shivered when he thought about what happened after that. Sendak had treated the situation like it was normal. Shiro had the answer to why her body reacted sexually to withdrawals from quintessence. Sendak had forced her into sexual situations to basically  _ earn  _ relief from the pain. 

 

    Shiro was sickened. This was sexual, mental, and emotional abuse, and it made him  _ livid. _

 

     ***

 

    Harlow fell asleep on Shiro after she was done crying. Her head rested on his abdomen peacefully. Shiro felt honored that she felt safe enough around him to let her guard down. He was just about to fall asleep himself when he was suddenly pulled into a memory. 

 

_     Sendak was there, right in front of Harlow’s face. His glowing bionic eye was one of the only lights in the room. He still had a hand in Harlow’s hair. He dragged her along the floor as he walked, causing her to scream again as pain seared through her head. He sat down on a big throne-like chair and deposited her on his lap.  _

 

_     “Since your mouth still hurts from last time, I’ll go easy on you,” Sendak said with mock kindness. He let go of her hair and she felt trickles of blood where his claws had been. Sendak did something out of sight before taking her bare body and pulling her down on his lap. She screamed as claws bit into her thighs- _

 

    Shiro came up from the dream, panting and shocked. He didn’t want to see this, but he knew that the more he knew about Harlow’s past, the better he could help her recover from it. So when Harlow brought him back into another memory, he didn’t fight it.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Follow for update notifications :)


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